25 June 2014

Crisis of Infinite Episodes - The Demon's Quest

This epic two-part globetrotting tale introduced Ra's al Ghul not only to me, but to the animated world of DC. True, he did appear in Off Balance, but this outing cemented his status as a worthy A-list villain for the Dark Knight. In many ways, Ra's engineered test played out like a James Bond movie, full of thugs, traps, exotic locales, Talia as the Bond babe, and even a great score. The episode even featured skiing assassins, a Bondian trope.

This adventure is a strong contender for one of the series best and if anything, its grown on me over time. Ra's may not have the flair of the Joker or the tragic back story of Freeze, but he enables grander scale threats on the order of billions of lives. When Ra's is on the scene, the whole world is at stake and this intro is a BTAS classic and should be a primer for all before watching the equally masterful Batman Begins.